


Sometimes Shopping Isn't the Worst

by Jsq86



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: All Human AU, Clothes Shopping, Coffee date, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Malec, Meet-Cute, Tags Are Hard, Titles are hard, one brain cell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 08:57:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21033647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jsq86/pseuds/Jsq86
Summary: Alec is reluctantly shopping when he meets a tall stranger





	Sometimes Shopping Isn't the Worst

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little wip that was maybe based on a prompt (I don’t really remember) that I wrote quickly a few months ago and decided to finish
> 
> Malec character descriptions and personalities based on the books, but this fic can be read with show!malec in mind as well

“Oh my god, Alec, if you don’t hurry up, I’m going to break down the door!”

Alec shook his head as his sister’s voice cut through the thin, wooden dressing room door and he closed his eyes and counted to five.He wasn’t sure how he’d let Isabelle talk him into going shopping with her, but there he was trapped in a too-small dressing room, trying on a mound of pants and shirts she’d picked out for him for a wedding he didn’t even want to go to. 

He was envious of his sister just then, who only had to buy a dress and then she was done.Alec had to find a shirt and pants that actually matched, and he’d asked Izzy why he couldn’t have just worn all black, to which she responded they were going to a wedding, not a funeral, and he’d promptly rolled his eyes and then earned himself pinch on the arm. 

Pounding on the door jerked him out of his thoughts and he scowled. 

“Would you chill? I’ll be out in a sec,” he called through the door, and then smiled to himself when he heard Isabelle groan.He tried on the second outfit she had picked out amongst the giant pile of clothes, and then inspected himself in the dressing room mirror.The shirt was a collared button down in what Isabelle had said was “cerulean”, though it just looked blue to Alec, and the pants were black.He wasn’t sure why he needed a new pair of black pants - he had plenty - but Isabelle insisted, claiming all of Alec’s were worn and tattered.He’d resented that, but hadn’t argued any further. 

He opened the door and stepped through while looking down at himself.The shirt felt a little snug, now that he thought about it, and he tugged on it a bit. 

“I don’t know, what do you think? Is the shirt too tight?” he asked, lifting his arms up.

“Looks good to me, darling.”

Alec’s head snapped up to see a man sitting on the plush settee behind where Isabelle had been standing, who was now nowhere in sight. 

“Oh, sorry, I was—my sister was just—“ Alec stammered and looked around.The man appeared to not even be listening, focusing instead on Alec standing there, his head tilted to one side as he bounced his foot up and down, a small smile on his face. 

“That blue goes great with your coloring,” the man said, wagging a finger at Alec, and Alec felt himself flush. 

“Th-thanks,” he croaked.Alec then realized he was still holding his arms out, and promptly dropped them to his sides. 

“Also, if you’re looking for your sister, I believe she stormed off in a huff and went that way.” The man hitched his thumb behind him, then stood up.“But I’ll help you pick out an outfit.”

He was standing in front of Alec before Alec could respond and he looked up at the gorgeous man, his mouth hanging open. 

“Magnus,” the man said, trying not to laugh, and extended a hand.Alec didn’t recall extending his own hand, but apparently he had because this Magnus guy was now shaking it. 

“It’s nice to meet you….?”

“Uh, Alec. Sorry. My name is Alec.” Alec shook his head and then closed his eyes.Jesus, it was like he’d never talked to a good looking guy before. When he opened his eyes Magnus was looking down at him quizzically, one eyebrow quirked.Alec cleared his throat. 

“So,” Magnus said, and put a hand on the dressing room door. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here.” He walked farther inside and began rifling through the pile of clothes Alec had set on the small bench. 

“What’s the occasion?” he asked as he held up a shirt in front of Alec. 

Alec cleared his throat again.“Uh, a wedding,” he said softly, wringing his hands nervously in front of him.He tried not to think how odd of a situation this was: a complete stranger in his dressing room with him, helping him pick out clothes.Magnus held up another shirt, then threw it down, did that for several others, before finally he stopped and stared at Alec, his chin in one hand as he tapped his cheek with a long, manicured finger.He hummed to himself and walked around Alec in a circle, and Alec had to keep from wrapping his arms around himself self-consciously. 

“You know, I do think that’s the best one,” Magnus said and waved a finger down Alec’s tall frame.“That color matches your eyes.”

Alec felt himself blush again and cursed his pale complexion.Though he was glad Magnus hadn’t found something else.He had the feeling the stranger would’ve made him strip right there and change in front of him. 

“Thanks. Izzy’ll be happy to know I found something.”

“That your sister?” Magnus asked, and Alec nodded.

Magnus left the dressing room and let Alec change back into his own clothes.When Alec finally emerged from the small room, he found Magnus sitting on the settee where he had first seen him, Isabelle still nowhere in sight.Magnus glanced up and smiled and Alec found himself smiling back. 

“What say you go buy that and then we grab a drink? There’s a Starbucks right outside the store,” Magnus suggested.Alec glanced around, wondering where Isabelle had went, but also wanting to spend more time with the stranger who’d just helped him pick out an outfit of his own volition.He decided to text her when they got to the Starbucks, and he followed Magnus to the register. 

“So were you waiting on someone?” Alec asked. 

“Hmm?” Magnus said, then looked down at him, his eyebrows lifting. 

“Well, you were just sitting by the dressing rooms.I figured maybe someone you knew was trying on clothes.”

“Oh, no. Just doing a little shopping by myself and I stopped to check my phone.Your sister’s behavior amused me, and then a few minutes later you had me picking out an outfit for you,” Magnus chuckled. 

After Alec had finished paying, they walked out together and grabbed coffee from the Starbucks kiosk located outside the store.Alec texted Isabelle after they sat down, and to his relief, she answered him almost immediately.Apparently she was fed up with Alec’s behavior and had promptly gone to find her own outfit for the wedding. 

“So who’s wedding?” Magnus asked as he sipped his frappuccino that Alec had insisted on buying for him as a thanks for helping pick out an outfit. 

"My brother’s girlfriend’s mom and her boyfriend.But the girlfriend is also friends with Isabelle and me so that’s why we’re invited,” Alec shrugged and took a drink of his own red eye. 

They continued to talk, and the few people scattered here and there soon turned into a crowd as the mall filled up with afterwork patrons.Magnus’s phone beeped on the table and he picked it up to look at it. 

“Shit, is it that late already?” he muttered.“Sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

Alec waved off the apology, and they both stood up and pushed in their chairs. 

“Well hello,” they heard and both turned to see Isabelle walking up, holding several shopping bags. 

“Oh, uh, Isabelle, this is Magnus,” Alec said. 

“Lovely to meet you, Isabelle,” Magnus said and kissed her hand. 

“Likewise,” Isabelle said, her smile wide, though she was slightly stunned at both her brother talking to some random guy, and said random guy kissing her on the hand. 

“Lovely to meet you too, Alec,” Magnus added, and winked. 

“Uh, yeah, you too,” Alec smiled and watched Magnus walk away into the crowd.Isabelle plopped down in Magnus’s vacated seat and dropped her bags. 

“Ok, spill. Who was that guy?”

Alec took another beat to watch him go before he sat down again.“Magnus. I literally just said that.”

Isabelle made a face at her brother.“Yes, I heard his name.Since when do you pick up random guys in the mall?”

Alec scoffed and rolled his eyes.“We met after you stormed out, and he helped me pick an outfit for the wedding.”

Isabelle’s jaw almost hit the table.“Are you kidding?” she beamed.“Alec, that’s so exciting!”

He failed to see what was so exciting. 

“You should totally bring him to the wedding!”

Alec scoffed again.“I just met the guy.I can’t bring him to a wedding.”

“Well, take him on a couple of dates, and _then_ bring him to the wedding,” his sister shrugged, like it was just that simple. 

Alec rolled his eyes again.

“Well you’re going to date him, aren’t you?”

He made a face. 

“Well you at least got his number, right?”

“Of course I did…” Alec trailed off then before whipping out his phone and scanning his contacts. 

“Fuck. Fuuuuuck,” he said and dropped his head to the table.He looked up then and scanned the crowd, but he knew Magnus was long gone by now.He dropped his head back onto the table. 

“Oh, Alec,” Isabelle said softly and patted the back of his head.“You are so braindead sometimes.”

Alec just groaned. 

.

They rode the subway home in near silence while Alec wallowed in his misery for not getting Magnus’s number.He didn’t even know his last name.Isabelle was seated next to him looking at her phone. 

“Maybe he’s on facebook? There can’t be that many Magnuses in the area.” She typed his name in the search bar and frowned.“Ok, so Magnus is a more popular name than I would’ve thought.”

Alec groaned again.

“Cheer up,” Isabelle said. “We’ll find him.Or he might try to find you.In the mean time, you should take all your social media profiles off private.”

“I don’t think he’s going to try to find me, in which case, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t get his number. He’s obviously not interested anyway, or he would’ve asked for mine.”

Isabelle looked at her brother like he was a special kind of stupid, then rolled her eyes.If Alec believed that this Magnus guy wasn’t interested in him, then she couldn’t very well change his mind, so she didn’t try, just continued trying to find him on social media.

“Silver lining is that you found an outfit for the wedding,” Isabelle added without looking up from her phone.

“How is that silver lining?” Alec asked, frowning. Isabelle only shrugged and Alec slouched lower in his seat.

.

It had been two weeks since that fateful day Alec had met Magnus.Everyone was tired of his moping. Even Alec was tired of it. So Jace did the only thing he knew would cheer Alec up and that was take him to a bar. Alec didn’t want to point out that getting wasted at a bar was what cheered _Jace_ up, because at this point he didn’t really care anymore, and it _would_ get his mind off of Magnus. Hopefully. 

Unfortunately, halfway through the evening, Jace did was Jace always did when they went out and ditched Alec to talk to a girl, despite already being in a committed relationship.Alec wasn’t quite finished with his second drink, so he decided to nurse it at the bar.He thought about calling Isabelle to join him, but decided against it. Then he thought about picking someone up, but that really wasn’t his style. He wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy, no matter how much liquor he consumed. 

He sipped his drink and scanned the bar.He was drinking too slowly, the amber liquid of the amaretto sour turning warm, and he grimaced. 

“Alec? Alec!”

Alec turned his head toward the sound of someone shouting his name and he must’ve been drunker than he thought, which he assumed was not at all, because he saw what looked to be Magnus coming toward him, but that couldn’t be right…

“Alexander, what are you doing here?” the Magnus apparition asked him.Alec glanced down at his drink.Had someone spiked it? He blinked up at Magnus, then reached out a hand. 

“Are you real?” he asked and went to touch Magnus on the cheek, but the taller man grabbed his hand and brought it back down. 

“Okay, I think you’ve had enough to drink,” he said quietly and moved the tumbler out of Alec’s reach on the bar. 

“Oh my gosh, Alec, that’s terrible! We should leave immediately,” he added, this time almost shouting. 

“Huh?”

“Just play along,” Magnus whispered.He grabbed Alec by the wrist and pulled him away from the bar to an occupied booth. 

“Camille, I am so sorry, but Alec, my roommate, he just informed me that a fire has broken out at our apartment and we have to go. Right, Alexander?” Magnus elbowed Alec in the ribs. 

“Oh, uh, right. Yes. A fire. We should go. Now.”

Magnus apologized again to the woman sitting in the booth, handed her a few wadded up bills, and ushered Alec out of the bar. 

When they got outside Magnus made sure his date wasn’t looking out the window and then relaxed. 

“Phew. Sorry about that,” he said.Alec shook his head, clearly confused by the turn of events. 

“Magnus, what—what are you doing here?” he asked. 

“I was on a particularly bad blind date.Then I saw you sitting up at the bar.It was like fate,” Magnus said and tilted his head, giving Alec a broad smile.Alec felt the corner of his mouth quirk up.He was so happy to see Magnus after two weeks of wallowing about him. 

“Come on,” Magnus said and linked arms with Alec.“Where are we going?” the younger man asked.Magnus just shrugged.“The night is young.”

They walked in companionable silence until they reached a park that was deserted, for the most part, and Magnus sat down on an empty swing.Alec followed and they sat side by side, swinging languidly, their feet never leaving the ground. 

“So what were you doing at a bar by yourself?” Magnus asked. 

“If I tell you,” Alec said, “promise you won’t think it sounds weird and stalkery?”

“All right,” Magnus chuckled. 

Alec recounted how he’d been trying to find Magnus for the past two weeks, and his brother was finally tired of it and dragged him to a bar to forget.Then proceeded to ditch him halfway through the night, hence why Alec was alone. 

Magnus stared at him, and Alec suddenly regretted opening his mouth.“You said you wouldn’t think it was weird,” Alec said softly and looked down at his feet.Magnus shook his head. 

“I don’t. It’s not that. It’s just…I was out for the same reason,” he laughed and ran a hand through his hair.Alec’s head snapped up.“What do you mean?”

“When it finally dawned on me that I hadn’t gotten your number, I went back to where you and your sister had been but you were gone.I was so dejected these last two weeks that my friend Cat made me go on this blind date in hopes of forgetting about you. Didn’t work, obviously.” He grinned and Alec found himself grinning back.

“Wow,” he replied. “You’d think between the two of us, one of us would have at least_ a _braincell.”

“Ah, but you know what they say,” Magnus said in a sing-song voice as he kicked off the ground, his swing going high into the air, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Alec laughed and brought his feet up as well and they swung back and forth. “I’m not usually one for cliches, but I think in this case you’re right.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to grab a drink somewhere?” Magnus suggested hesitantly.“At a different bar than my blind date, of course.”

Alec skidded to a stop, his feet kicking up a cloud of dirt.“Ok, but let’s go for coffee before my drinks make a reappearance,” he answered, and frowned. 

Magnus jumped from his swing onto the ground.“Deal,” he said, spinning around to face Alec. Then he grabbed Alec’s hand, hauled him off the swing, and kissed him on the cheek, before turning and walking toward the park entrance.Alec just stood there stunned, his hand lightly touching the spot Magnus’s lips had briefly been, then quickly followed after.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @my-archerboy 🖤💙


End file.
